Group 16- Information from the internet and the links.
Questions:
How did the family shape/change Christchurch?
Why did they come to New Zealand?
What was Christchurch like when they arrived? (1842)
What would it have been like building Riccarton Cottage?
Christchurch has long been known as the garden city. There is no doubting that the deans brothers contributed a lot to this reputation. It was partly because of the http://www.riccartonhouse.co.nz/deans_cottage/
Built from timber cut in Riccarton Bush and pit sawn into boards, the cottage was the first home shared by the Deans as they strove to establish their farming vision at Riccarton. The brothers lived in the cottage until their early and tragic deaths. William drowned in the shipwreck of the barque "Maria" when she struck a rock near Cape Terawhiti off the Wellington Heads in July 1851. John, who travelled to Scotland in 1852 to marry Jane McIlraith, returned to Riccarton in February 1853 and died in the cottage from tuberculosis in June 1854.
Jane Deans and her son John continued to live in the cottage until the building of the first stage of Riccarton House was completed and they were able to move to their new home in March 1856.
When John died of tuberculosis less than a year later, Jane Deans was left alone with a baby son.
She decided to remain in New Zealand and look after the estate for her son until he was old enough to take it over. Jane had little knowledge of farming but became a good judge of stock, especially horses and cattle.
She was active in the life of the growing community, and was a strong supporter of the Presbyterian Church in Christchurch.
She told much of the story of her life in Letters to my grandchildren.
Jane Deans died on 19 January 1911 at Riccarton. Riccarton Bush was presented to the people of Canterbury by the Deans family in 1914.
Summary
The Deans brothers proved that farming, particularly sheep farming could be profitable in Canterbury, although the previous attempt by James Herriot had failed.
Disappointed with the land which had been allocated to them in Wellington and Nelson by the New Zealand Company, the brothers applied for permission to farm at Puturingamotu, (Riccarton) which was given to them on condition they did not settle near Māori plantings.
From Lyttelton they came around to the Estuary. From there they took a whaleboat up what is now the Avon River to a place where they unloaded bricks for a chimney, and changed to a canoe which could cope with the shallow water.
At the point on the river where the present Christchurch Girl's High School stands, they unloaded their supplies and carried them through to the patch of bush at Puturingamotu where James Herriot had first settled.
Here William Deans and Samuel Manson built the first house, with three compartments for the three families and using wooden pegs to hold it together because the nails had been left in Wellington.
While the house was being built John Gebbie remained with the women and children at Port Levy, and John Deans sailed from Wellington to Sydney to buy sheep and cattle.
Once the farm was established the Deans brothers bargained with the local Māori owners to lease more land. On 3 December 1846 a 21 year lease was signed for the land running six miles in every direction from Puturingamotu.
More stock was brought in and the Deans brothers were able to sell their produce in Akaroa and Wellington, and their wool in London.
In 1848 the New Zealand Company bought land from Ngāi Tahu under the terms of Kemp's Deed for the Canterbury settlement.
The Deans brothers were allowed to have 400 acres for their farm in exchange for the land orders for Nelson and Wellington originally bought from the Company, but were unable to have any more.
An agreement was signed on Christmas Day 1848 with Captain Thomas, surveyor of the new settlement, agreeing that the farm would be named Riccarton, after the Deans' home parish in Scotland, and the nearby river the Avon, after the stream on their grandfather's farm.
Half of the Puturingamotu bush was to be kept by the Deans brothers, but half was to go to the Canterbury Association to provide timber and firewood for the new settlers.
Because they were limited by the amount of land they could hold at Riccarton, William and John Deans decide to shift their sheep to a run of 15,000 acres in the foothills in April 1850, which they called Morven Hills.
After an argument with John Robert Godley, who acted as agent for the Canterbury Association, the Deans brothers took up a large run at Homebush.
In May 1851 William sailed for Australia to buy more stock. His ship was wrecked off Cape Terawhiti on 23 July 1851 and William Deans drowned.
John returned to Scotland in 1852 and married Jane McIlraith, bringing her to New Zealand in 1853.
John Deans had caught a chill on his way to Scotland and later developed tuberculosis. He died at Riccarton on 23 June 1854. On his deathbed he asked his wife Jane to make sure that Riccarton Bush remained forever.
Jane Deans: adult life
Jane McIlraith first met John Deans and his brother, William, at a picnic.
When John decided on farming as a career, his father arranged for him to stay with Jane's family and work on the McIlraith properties.
Jane and John Deans became close but did not become engaged as Jane felt she could not agree to marry a man living in the same house.
After John left for New Zealand in 1842, Jane was not to see him for another ten years.
Although Jane did not write to John, he wrote to her father and in July 1850 was given permission to marry her. Jane would not travel out to New Zealand without being married, and so, after his brother William's death by drowning in 1851, John returned to Scotland.
Jane married John Deans on 15 September 1852, and her only baby, a son, John, was born on 6 August 1853, six months after her arrival in New Zealand.
The Deans brothers were trained as lawyers but were more interested in emigrating to New Zealand under the New Zealand Company's colonising scheme, and left for New Zealand (William in 1840, and John in 1842).
William and John Deans, first and third of four sons of John Deans, a notary, and his wife, Catherine Young, were born in the parish of Kirkstyle, Riccarton, Scotland. William was baptised on 31 January 1817; John was born on 4 May 1820. Both attended schools at Kilmarnock and Colmonell and then undertook legal training. However, they expressed interest in emigrating and in preparation for this were placed on good farms in Scotland. The colonising proposals of the New Zealand Company appealed to them. William bought land orders in the Wellington scheme in 1839 and sailed from London in one of the earliest company ships, the Aurora , in September that year, arriving at Port Nicholson (Wellington) on 22 January 1840.
He was greatly disappointed to find that not all his land was available to him. Initially the land the New Zealand Company claimed to have bought was under investigation by the new government, and subsequently surveys were delayed. After arrival he farmed near Pito-one (Petone) beach and at the same time obtained a contract as a surveyor's labourer. Later he went with others on an expedition to explore the country around Wanganui and Taranaki. The distance traversed was about 650 miles. He also explored Wairarapa with a Maori whose identity is unknown, and briefly considered squatting there. By March 1841 he had shifted from Petone to Okiwi, on the eastern shore of the harbour.
Riccarton Bush has been preserved as one of the few remaining stands of bush on the Canterbury Plains because of the
Christmas Day agreement between the Deans brothers and Captain Thomas when the brothers kept half the original bush and Captain Thomas guaranteed that it would be protected forever.
On his deathbed in 1854, John Deans asked that his wife Jane make sure that Riccarton Bush was preserved forever.
As a result Riccarton Bush is probably the oldest protected natural area in the country. It is a reminder of what the Canterbury Plains would have looked like before human settlement. The trees are mostly kahikatea (between 400 and 600 years old), totara, matai, kowhai, hinau and other species. Native climbing plants and a wide range of ferns and mosses are also found there.
The native bird population has dropped in number since the arrival of the European settlers. Fossil records show that kiwi, takahe and moa once lived there. With the clearing of almost three-quarters of the original pre-European bush, the native bird-life declined. The most common birds there now are introduced species, such as sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes and starlings.
Introduced animals have not helped the native bird and insect populations. Australian brush-tailed possums arrived around 1900, 12 hedgehogs escaped from Merivale in the 1890s, rabbits were introduced in the 1850s, and rats (Norway and ship) and mice have been in New Zealand since the beginning of the nineteenth century. They all inhabit the Bush.
Riccarton Bush was first seen by Captain Barney Rhodes in 1836 when he climbed the hills from Port Cooper and looked at the plains beyond.
It is shown clearly in maps drawn as early as 1845, and in Charles Torlesse's detailed survey map of Canterbury in 1849. It was a favourite subject of early artists as well.
Before European settlement, Putaringamotu was a valuable source of food and timber for the Māori. From the bush they produced carvings, canoes, and preserved pigeons.
For the first Pakeha the bush was a source of shelter and building timber and firewood.
In the 1848 Christmas Day agreement signed between the Deans brothers and the agents for the Canterbury Association, Captain Thomas and William Fox, the Deans gave up half of what was now to be known as Riccarton Bush, to provide timber and firewood for the new settlers.
By July 1851 the Christchurch settlers had cut down all the standing timber in their half of the bush. Papanui Bush was cleared completely by 1861, and other patches of bush at Hoon Hay, Halswell, Tai Tapu, Woodend, Rangiora, Ohoka and Tuahiwi had almost disappeared by 1870.
The Deans used the timber in their half of Riccarton Bush carefully. Some kahikatea and matai was used for the framing and weatherboarding of buildings at Riccarton, and later at Homebush, but only fallen or dead timber was used for firewood and fencing.
Twice in the early days of Christchurch fires came close to the Bush. Jane Deans planted introduced trees around the edge of the Bush to protect it from wind. These exotic trees have gradually been removed in recent years.
In 1914 the Deans family presented the remaining 15.7 acres of Riccarton Bush to the people of Canterbury, on condition that it be preserved for all time in its natural state.
A Board of Trustees was set up according to the Riccarton Bush Act of 1914 and the bush was opened to the public on 24 February 1917. The area around the bush was extended when the Christchurch City Council bought Riccarton House from the Deans family in 1947. The Deans Cottage, the oldest surviving building on the Canterbury Plains, is also sited there. Brothers Thomas HarrisonRichmond MariaLyttelton Times http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/DNZB/alt_essayBody.asp?essayID=1D7 Aurora Brothers Thomas HarrisonRichmond MariaLyttelton Times http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/ Minerva Jane DeansJane Deans** http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/D/DeansWilliamAndJohn/DeansWilliamAndJohn/en
The 1840s was the era of the Industrial Revolution, when large numbers of people, men, women and children, worked in factories, or in the mines. They worked very long hours for very little money, though there was a great deal of concern about the dreadful conditions they laboured under, and some steps had already been taken to limit the hours worked by women and children. In 1844 the Factory Act restricted women's working hours to 12 hours a day, a 6-hour day for children aged 8-13: a proposal that they should attend church schools was dropped due to sectarian hostility. In 1847, the 'Ten Hours' factory act was passed, which limited the working day in factories to 10 hours for women and young people of both sexes aged 13-18.
Large numbers of people, especially women, worked in domestic service, i.e. as servants. Girls would often start in service when quite young, ten or twelve years old. It was very hard work, but they mostly lived in, which meant they had bed and food provided. The way servants were treated varied greatly according to the temperement of the employer.
A lot of women worked in the garment industry, sewing clothes, it was not well-paid (it still isn't) and the women worked very long hours.
Due to enclosures of farm land, there were far fewer jobs for people inthe country, but many poor people still worked as farm labourers, which was also hard work and not very well paid. People who lived in the country though would normally grow vegetables in their gardens, and keep their own chickens, and fatten a pig up for killing in the autumn, so they supplemented their scanty incomes in that way.
Towns were very dirty, with the soot from factory chimneys, and pollution generally. Hospitals were dirty and disease-ridden, because Florence Nightingale had not yet embarked on her great work of cleaning them up.
There were charitable schools 'ragged schools' as they were known, for poor children, but as yet there was no organised compulsory education for children.
Middle-class children might attend day schools or go to boarding school if their parents could afford it. Girls might be taught at home by a governess, or go to a boarding school. Teaching was one of the few respectable ways for a middle-class single woman to earn a living.
1847 was a memorable year for literature, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey were all published this year. It was also the year 'Vanity Fair' by Thackeray began to be published in monthly installments.
1847 was also the year when the famous Swedish singer Jenny Lind made her debut in England.
1845 was the year of the first Oxford-Cambridge boat race.
1848 was the year of massive Chartist demonstrations in London, the Chartists were a group of revolutionaries who wanted the vote for all men (only a very limited number of men of property could vote at this time), and other social reforms.
Source(s):
'The chronology of British History, from 250,000 BC to the Present Day' by Alan & Veronica Palmer
Riccarton Bush (also known as Deans Bush) is the only surviving swamp forest on the Canterbury Plains. In 1843 the Deans brothers established a farm on the edge of the area, now a public reserve. The Deans’s cottage (1843) and house are publicly owned.
Questions:
Christchurch has long been known as the garden city. There is no doubting that the deans brothers contributed a lot to this reputation. It was partly because of the
http://www.riccartonhouse.co.nz/deans_cottage/
Built from timber cut in Riccarton Bush and pit sawn into boards, the cottage was the first home shared by the Deans as they strove to establish their farming vision at Riccarton. The brothers lived in the cottage until their early and tragic deaths. William drowned in the shipwreck of the barque "Maria" when she struck a rock near Cape Terawhiti off the Wellington Heads in July 1851. John, who travelled to Scotland in 1852 to marry Jane McIlraith, returned to Riccarton in February 1853 and died in the cottage from tuberculosis in June 1854.
Jane Deans and her son John continued to live in the cottage until the building of the first stage of Riccarton House was completed and they were able to move to their new home in March 1856.
Summary
http://library.christchurch.org.nz/Childrens/EarlyChristchurch/DeansFamily.asp
Deans Brothers: adult lives
-
- Disappointed with the land which had been allocated to them in Wellington and Nelson by the New Zealand Company, the brothers applied for permission to farm at Puturingamotu, (Riccarton) which was given to them on condition they did not settle near Māori plantings.
Deans house
The first house on the Canterbury Plains, Riccarton. In 1843 the Deans brothers built this house. [ca. 1890]On 10 February 1843 William sailed for Port Cooper with the Gebbie family, who had come from Scotland with William Deans, and the Manson family, who had travelled with John Deans.
Jane Deans: adult life
- Jane McIlraith first met John Deans and his brother, William, at a picnic.
- When John decided on farming as a career, his father arranged for him to stay with Jane's family and work on the McIlraith properties.
- Jane and John Deans became close but did not become engaged as Jane felt she could not agree to marry a man living in the same house.
- After John left for New Zealand in 1842, Jane was not to see him for another ten years.
- Although Jane did not write to John, he wrote to her father and in July 1850 was given permission to marry her. Jane would not travel out to New Zealand without being married, and so, after his brother William's death by drowning in 1851, John returned to Scotland.
- Jane married John Deans on 15 September 1852, and her only baby, a son, John, was born on 6 August 1853, six months after her arrival in New Zealand.
- The Deans brothers were trained as lawyers but were m ore interested in emigrating to New Zealand under the New Zealand Company's colonising scheme, and left for New Zealand (William in 1840, and John in 1842).
William and John Deans, first and third of four sons of John Deans, a notary, and his wife, Catherine Young, were born in the parish of Kirkstyle, Riccarton, Scotland. William was baptised on 31 January 1817; John was born on 4 May 1820. Both attended schools at Kilmarnock and Colmonell and then undertook legal training. However, they expressed interest in emigrating and in preparation for this were placed on good farms in Scotland. The colonising proposals of the New Zealand Company appealed to them. William bought land orders in the Wellington scheme in 1839 and sailed from London in one of the earliest company ships, the Aurora , in September that year, arriving at Port Nicholson (Wellington) on 22 January 1840.He was greatly disappointed to find that not all his land was available to him. Initially the land the New Zealand Company claimed to have bought was under investigation by the new government, and subsequently surveys were delayed. After arrival he farmed near Pito-one (Petone) beach and at the same time obtained a contract as a surveyor's labourer. Later he went with others on an expedition to explore the country around Wanganui and Taranaki. The distance traversed was about 650 miles. He also explored Wairarapa with a Maori whose identity is unknown, and briefly considered squatting there. By March 1841 he had shifted from Petone to Okiwi, on the eastern shore of the harbour.
- Riccarton Bush has been preserved as one of the few remaining stands of bush on the Canterbury Plains because of the
- Christmas Day agreement between the Deans brothers and Captain Thomas when the brothers kept half the original bush and Captain Thomas guaranteed that it would be protected forever.
- continued support of Jane Deans and her family.
http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/EarlyChristchurch/RiccartonBush.aspRiccarton Bush
On his deathbed in 1854, John Deans asked that his wife Jane make sure that Riccarton Bush was preserved forever.As a result Riccarton Bush is probably the oldest protected natural area in the country. It is a reminder of what the Canterbury Plains would have looked like before human settlement. The trees are mostly kahikatea (between 400 and 600 years old), totara, matai, kowhai, hinau and other species. Native climbing plants and a wide range of ferns and mosses are also found there.
The native bird population has dropped in number since the arrival of the European settlers. Fossil records show that kiwi, takahe and moa once lived there. With the clearing of almost three-quarters of the original pre-European bush, the native bird-life declined. The most common birds there now are introduced species, such as sparrows, blackbirds, thrushes and starlings.
Introduced animals have not helped the native bird and insect populations. Australian brush-tailed possums arrived around 1900, 12 hedgehogs escaped from Merivale in the 1890s, rabbits were introduced in the 1850s, and rats (Norway and ship) and mice have been in New Zealand since the beginning of the nineteenth century. They all inhabit the Bush.
Riccarton Bush was first seen by Captain Barney Rhodes in 1836 when he climbed the hills from Port Cooper and looked at the plains beyond.
It is shown clearly in maps drawn as early as 1845, and in Charles Torlesse's detailed survey map of Canterbury in 1849. It was a favourite subject of early artists as well.
Before European settlement, Putaringamotu was a valuable source of food and timber for the Māori. From the bush they produced carvings, canoes, and preserved pigeons.
For the first Pakeha the bush was a source of shelter and building timber and firewood.
In the 1848 Christmas Day agreement signed between the Deans brothers and the agents for the Canterbury Association, Captain Thomas and William Fox, the Deans gave up half of what was now to be known as Riccarton Bush, to provide timber and firewood for the new settlers.
By July 1851 the Christchurch settlers had cut down all the standing timber in their half of the bush. Papanui Bush was cleared completely by 1861, and other patches of bush at Hoon Hay, Halswell, Tai Tapu, Woodend, Rangiora, Ohoka and Tuahiwi had almost disappeared by 1870.
The Deans used the timber in their half of Riccarton Bush carefully. Some kahikatea and matai was used for the framing and weatherboarding of buildings at Riccarton, and later at Homebush, but only fallen or dead timber was used for firewood and fencing.
Twice in the early days of Christchurch fires came close to the Bush. Jane Deans planted introduced trees around the edge of the Bush to protect it from wind. These exotic trees have gradually been removed in recent years.
In 1914 the Deans family presented the remaining 15.7 acres of Riccarton Bush to the people of Canterbury, on condition that it be preserved for all time in its natural state.
A Board of Trustees was set up according to the Riccarton Bush Act of 1914 and the bush was opened to the public on 24 February 1917. The area around the bush was extended when the Christchurch City Council bought Riccarton House from the Deans family in 1947. The Deans Cottage, the oldest surviving building on the Canterbury Plains, is also sited there.
Brothers
Thomas HarrisonRichmond
MariaLyttelton Times
http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/DNZB/alt_essayBody.asp?essayID=1D7
Aurora
Brothers
Thomas HarrisonRichmond
MariaLyttelton Times
http://www.dnzb.govt.nz/dnzb/
Minerva
Jane DeansJane Deans**
http://www.teara.govt.nz/1966/D/DeansWilliamAndJohn/DeansWilliamAndJohn/en
DEANS, William and John
Aurora
Thomas HarrisonRichmondRichmondPrincess Royal
CometWoodbridge
Marie
Minerva
http://christchurchcitylibraries.com/Heritage/Places/Public/RiccartonBush/
Riccarton House, Riccarton Bush and Deans Cottage
Deans' Cottage
Riccarton House
Riccarton House in 1900
http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20080928043337AAdmnAs
The 1840s was the era of the Industrial Revolution, when large numbers of people, men, women and children, worked in factories, or in the mines. They worked very long hours for very little money, though there was a great deal of concern about the dreadful conditions they laboured under, and some steps had already been taken to limit the hours worked by women and children. In 1844 the Factory Act restricted women's working hours to 12 hours a day, a 6-hour day for children aged 8-13: a proposal that they should attend church schools was dropped due to sectarian hostility. In 1847, the 'Ten Hours' factory act was passed, which limited the working day in factories to 10 hours for women and young people of both sexes aged 13-18.
Large numbers of people, especially women, worked in domestic service, i.e. as servants. Girls would often start in service when quite young, ten or twelve years old. It was very hard work, but they mostly lived in, which meant they had bed and food provided. The way servants were treated varied greatly according to the temperement of the employer.
A lot of women worked in the garment industry, sewing clothes, it was not well-paid (it still isn't) and the women worked very long hours.
Due to enclosures of farm land, there were far fewer jobs for people inthe country, but many poor people still worked as farm labourers, which was also hard work and not very well paid. People who lived in the country though would normally grow vegetables in their gardens, and keep their own chickens, and fatten a pig up for killing in the autumn, so they supplemented their scanty incomes in that way.
Towns were very dirty, with the soot from factory chimneys, and pollution generally. Hospitals were dirty and disease-ridden, because Florence Nightingale had not yet embarked on her great work of cleaning them up.
There were charitable schools 'ragged schools' as they were known, for poor children, but as yet there was no organised compulsory education for children.
Middle-class children might attend day schools or go to boarding school if their parents could afford it. Girls might be taught at home by a governess, or go to a boarding school. Teaching was one of the few respectable ways for a middle-class single woman to earn a living.
1847 was a memorable year for literature, Charlotte Bronte's Jane Eyre, Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights, and Anne Bronte's Agnes Grey were all published this year. It was also the year 'Vanity Fair' by Thackeray began to be published in monthly installments.
1847 was also the year when the famous Swedish singer Jenny Lind made her debut in England.
1845 was the year of the first Oxford-Cambridge boat race.
1848 was the year of massive Chartist demonstrations in London, the Chartists were a group of revolutionaries who wanted the vote for all men (only a very limited number of men of property could vote at this time), and other social reforms.
Source(s):
'The chronology of British History, from 250,000 BC to the Present Day' by Alan & Veronica Palmerhttp://www.teara.govt.nz/Places/Canterbury/CanterburyPlaces/7/en
Riccarton Bush (also known as Deans Bush) is the only surviving swamp forest on the Canterbury Plains. In 1843 the Deans brothers established a farm on the edge of the area, now a public reserve. The Deans’s cottage (1843) and house are publicly owned.
Group 16 main page Our equiry log Information ready for presentation Bibliography